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Saturday, February 21, 2015

Scott Walker: The Dumbing Down of America's Poster Boy!!! Wisconsin's so proud.

It's never a good sign when your own governor and - yikes - candidate for president, is the poster boy for the current anti-education movement within the Republican Party. Even "stand with Walker" idol worshipers, with their own families to worry about, can't be happy with the downward direction their party is taking on education. College nowadays is as standard as having a high school diploma. That scares Republicans, who have for years believed universities brainwash students with liberal socialist ideas. It's time to block the school house doors again, but this time, to everyone. Salon:

If you ever want to make a conservative touchy, the quickest
way is to hint that the connection between ignorance and
holding right-wing views is more than a coincidence. But when you look at what
Republican politicians are up to these days, especially in state legislatures,
it starts to look like Republicans are purposefully trying to make Americans
more ignorant. Here are 5 recent examples.1) Oklahoma is about to ban AP history classes. Under
the guise of “emergency” legislation, the
education committee in the Oklahoma legislature had an 11-4 vote to
advance a bill that would ban the advanced placement history curriculum from
Oklahoma schools. There’s not even a real attempt here, as with other
conservative assaults on education, to hide that the goal is to keep students
ignorant so that they are more susceptible to right wing propaganda. The bill’s
sponsor, state representative Dan Fisher, argued that the schools should be
teaching “American exceptionalism,” and avoiding teaching parts of American history
that are less than flattering. The Republican
National Committee has endorsed the idea that AP history courses
should teach less strife and present a more rah-rah view of American history.
In Colorado, attempts to whitewash the history classes even
resulted in student walkouts, garnering national attention.2) Scott Walker has it out for the University of Wisconsin. Walker
… not caring that it’s the state’s pride and joy … The
goal is to slash a whopping $300 million from the University of
Wisconsin system over the next two years … Walker and his staff haven’t really
taken many pains to hide that this is rooted in a deeper hostility to the very
idea of knowledge itself. “…his staff proposed changing the university’s
ethereal focus on the pursuit of truth, known as the ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ to a
grittier focus on ‘workforce needs,’” reports the Washington Post. Walker
backed off recasting higher education as nothing more than job training … but
the fact that this wording change was proposed at all shows that the hostility
to education is ideological and has little to nothing to do with saving
money.3) Redefining education as “welfare” Mississippi state
representative Gene Alday made national headlines recently … “I come from a
town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare
crazy checks.’ Alday went on his rant in part because he was trying to justify
his opposition to increased funding for elementary school education. Alday’s
little racist spiel was an attempt to insinuate that teaching kids reading and
writing amounts to “welfare” and to suggest that education is wasted on black
people in particular.4) Threatening to arrest teachers for sex education. In
Kansas, Republicans are no
longer satisfied with laws requiring teachers to pretend that it’s
normal and expected for people to wait until marriage to have sex. Now there’s
growing support for having teachers fear jail time should they ever hint,
during sex education, that sex is a thing people do for pleasure. Using
a teacher who had a poster up in class that suggested—gasp!—that sex is
sometimes used to show affection, Republicans in the state are sponsoring a
bill that would allow officials to criminally charge teachers for daring to acknowledge
such a thing ever again.5) Continued demands that science education be replaced with
magic … creationists haven’t gone anywhere. In South Dakota, Republicans
once again pushed for a bill that would “allow” teachers to “question”
evolution in the classroom, which is a fancy way of saying that teachers would
be permitted to treat being ignorant as the equivalent of being educated. Asked
recently about evolution, Gov.
Scott Walker stuck to the narrative that elevates ignorance over
education, saying, “That’s a question politicians shouldn’t be involved in one
way or another. I am going to leave that up to you.” The comment was the
exaltation of ignorance over education. Evolutionary theory is a knowable
thing. Walker epitomized the new conservative mentality of ignorance uber
alles.

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One Man's Challenge to a Party Bent on Destruction

Politics: Just a guy tired of "compromising." Stop encouraging Republicans when it comes to their failed ideology.
I was once a liberal radio talk host. Played co-host to Vicki McKenna, a complete liar who can't can't stop filling the airwaves with mindless babble.
I'm someone who enjoys the the painful smiles of conservatives as they struggle to deny the avalanche of facts tumbling their way. They seem preoccupied with spelling and grammar.
Real Estate: I also hosted a real estate radio show.
Currently dabbling in part time work.